It took me more than a year, but I FINALLY got the next volume in my series of research catalogs for questioning Scientology's religiosity compiled and published. While this is the midpoint in my series, it's actually the most significant since Scientology beliefs fit into the category of New Age Gnosticism as far as comparative religious studies go. And the monster size of this volume, as well as the time it took me to compile it, reflects that.

Synopsis: This volume of the Scientology Religiosity? Series of research publications has been compiled as the second intermediate module for the middle segment in a larger body of materials. These volumes are assembled for educational purposes with an aim for supporting additional review on basic points of comparison between Scientology principles of faith and the common beliefs of other major religions. The enclosed subject matter explores the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard and the doctrines of the Church of Scientology relevant to their system of alternative mental health therapy techniques that they declare are spiritual in nature. These beliefs form the basis of what is labeled as an “Applied Religious Philosophy” that follows a dualistic path of enlightenment defined as “The Bridge to Total Freedom” as illustrated in the last volume of this series. This path to enlightenment requires both training and practical application of auditing techniques that have been prescribed by Hubbard for the purpose of "making the able more able." Additionally, this volume also introduces other unusual indoctrination standards and mechanisms that are seen as essential tools adherents must apply in their lives as a means of achieving a form of salvation that is described as “knowing how to know.”

Major Highlights in Vol5: The opening subsection is something never posted on the internet before. It's an examination of Scientology's Esoteric Roots by author and columnist Dr. David V. Barrett. Barrett is a sociology of religion expert akin to Stephen Kent, except he left the university life behind early in his career.

Barrett's treatment of Scientology over the course of his publications is an interesting one. In his first book he cataloged an encyclopedic entry for the cult that was primarily one-sided and based on Church propaganda plus a few media reports with a footnote readily admitting that unlike many of the other NRMs he cataloged, he really didn't know that much about Scientology. He later did a second, greatly expanded, edition of that same book (under a revised title that received much acclaim: The New Believers: Sects, cults, and alternative religions) and he hit Scientology much harder with a well balanced entry that cited the classic critical sources (Atack, Miller, Cordyon, Government reports, etc.).

This put him on the radar of the cult's UK PR spokeshole Graeme Wilson who tried to "handle" him as they do with all religious studies experts. LULZ ensued. Barrett played their game, and worked them over hard! He then tripped them up on contradictions within their own documentation that is partially explained in the footnotes for the excerpt in my newly released volume above. There was also several media articles written on this back in the day by Barrett that are no longer on the internet but I'm still trying to track down copies of to hopefully resurrect eventually.

Also to Barrett's credit is a flashback to the Tom Cruise couch jumping episode. For those who followed the cult's shenanigans that far back, you may recall that the UK media had a field day with that incident and took a much harsher approach to debunking Scientology in the fallout rather than just the celebwhoring we seen in the US. Dr. Barrett was the expert all the media outlets sought out for soundbites, and he not only shook Scientology's tree hard with everything he had learned since his second book was published, but he was also (as far as I can tell) the FIRST academic to call bullshit on their inflated membership numbers. Circa 2006! Mirrored here:

Synopsis: This volume of the Scientology Religiosity? Series of research publications has been compiled as the third intermediate module for the middle segment in a larger body of materials. These volumes are assembled for educational purposes with an aim for supporting additional review on basic points of comparison between Scientology principles of faith and the common beliefs of other religions. The enclosed subject matter examines the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology relevant to some of the metaphysical tenets and general mindset for their spiritual beliefs that Hubbard claimed was the modern day continuation of Indic religions and the teachings of Gautama Buddha. Upon closer examination, the relevant comparison points for the basic spiritual beliefs presented in this volume seemingly correspond to New Age systems of belief that are derivatives of the teachings of Helena Blavatsky, such as Theosophy and Thelema, rather than classic forms of Eastern Beliefs.

Major Highlights in Vol6: Since this is the first of several volumes that span the topical area of "Eastern Beliefs," I literally had a ton of materials to sort & spread out over several publications. So unfortunately, some of the more exciting stuff I had originally planned to include in this volume got shuffled to later volumes in order to spread out the size of each of my publications more evenly. But the remaining stuff worth noting is as follows:

Subsection 007 - the original pre-release series of Maitreya Buddha articles the set stage for Hubbard's claim to godhood fame in the Hymn of Asia. For many years, the FZ'rs kept these Advance! Magazine articles close to their chest and were tight fisted with sharing them in all ridiculous glory the public domain for fear of ridicule. And it took an industrious Anon from downunder to help me fnally dig up the entire series.

Subsections 008 & 009 - Digging up the original Hubbard-Is-Maitreya series wasn't enough. I had to harpoon that shit just a wee bit before I moved on. And I excerpted a relevant bit from Hugh Urban's book to give it the proper scrutiny it deserved.

Subsections 018 and 022-024 - Scientology's claim to being an extension of Eastern Beliefs falls apart right quick under scrutiny. The real comparison to be made is with other New Age beliefs systems that were much closer derivatives of Indic religious beliefs. So I have few relevant excerpts from Thelema (Aleister Crowley) and Theosophy (Helena Blavatsky) that reflects where some of Hubbard's spiritual doctrine inspiration actually seems to be derived from.

What is next: In the course of beginning to tackle the Scientology vs Eastern beliefs points of comparison, I realized it was time to revise (and regroup) my theoretical approach to analyzing this stuff. when I first started this series, my perspective was: Scientology religious beliefs are more aligned with mysticism than an actual new age theology.

But ^^That theory falls apart right quick because so much of what they treat the same as doctrine is NOT really related to spirituality. So then my next gen theory was: Scientology religious beliefs are an amalgamation of poorly researched psuedo-science and mysticism thinly disguised as new age gnosticism.

And ^^That theory basically jives with the way Hugh Urban classified Scientology doctrine in his most recent journal article in Novio Religion Journal (The Occult Roots of Scientology? Vol. 15, No. 3). Except his words put it more eloquently than I did:

Quote from: Professor Urban

An eclectic and ingenious religious entrepreneur, Hubbard assembled a wide array of philosophical, occult, spiritual and science fiction elements, cobbling them together into a unique, new and surprisingly successful synthesis. In Hubbard’s religious bricolage, occult elements drawn from Crowley were indeed one important element, but neither more nor less important than the many others drawn from pop psychology, Eastern religions, science fiction and a host of goods available in the 1950s spiritual marketplace.

^^Nicely put. But that definition is superficial at best as far as what my project aims to do - debunk Scientology claims to religiosity and and rip off their religious cloaking shield to expose it as the fraud it truly is. And I have finally hit on what I think is the right angle/approach for doing that by addressing my subject matter from the perspective of a propaganda study rather than religious study. So this is my new working theory: Scientology religious beliefs = pure propaganda.

So my next steps is to take a short break from compiling the remaining volumes, do my homework on classic "propaganda techniques" that were contemporary with Hubbard's initial claims of Scientology being a religion + the second phase of pushing that claim when they were angling to get their tax exemption status back in the USA, as well as the modern day standards for classifying types of propanda. Then get myself up to speed on the gist of current methodologies for doing propaganda analysis in the communications field.

So once I got some more basic knowledge on ^^This stuff under my belt, I'm going to backtrack a step or two to review the volumes I've completed so far - and possibly doctor up a few bits to fit my new theory better. Then return to finishing up compiling/releasing the rest of the volumes in my 10part series game plan that is mapped out in the recently updated version of my materials index document here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/57784121/Scientology-Religiosity-Materials-Index

ETA on getting the rest of the series done - I hope to have my propaganda techniques & analysis background homework done by the fall, and (hopefully) be back on track with finishing things up for the outstanding publications in October or November of this year (2013).

Synopsis: This volume of the Scientology Religiosity? Series of research publications has been compiled as the final intermediate module for the middle segment in a larger body of materials. These volumes are assembled for educational purposes with an aim for supporting further study on basic points of comparison between Scientology principles of faith and the common beliefs of other religions.

The enclosed subject matter examines the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology relevant to the manner in which Hubbard re-engineered the concepts he developed as a “science of the mind” for Dianetics therapy into the applied religious philosophy of Scientology. Once complete, this re-branding included redefining his practices and the nature of his organization under the moniker of a “church” that promotes a form of eternal salvation contingent on repairing an adherents’ mental health deficiencies that result from traumatic incidents they endured in past lives. The platform for these revelations that redefined the early Dianetics movement was partially justified by Hubbard’s claim of being a modern-day reincarnation of the Maitreya Buddha with knowledge of the secrets of the universe that only he could reveal.

Featured highlights in Vol7:

The early marketing of Scientology’s beliefs being a religion for the space age with Hubbard’s credentials as a science-fiction writer being crafted into that of a scientist turned philosopher.

The fundamental tenets of L. Ron Hubbard’s philosophy, the states of enlightenment that followers strive to achieve and how it surpasses any other previous philosophy.

The personal empowerment or self-actualization aspects of the Scientology religion and the eastern spirituality tenets they were supposedly derived from.

The propaganda and bull-baiting mechanisms used to enforce the legitimacy of the spiritual claims Hubbard devised and promoted as being factual rather than based on blind faith.

The groundwork that was laid for the commercialization of L. Ron Hubbard’s applied philosophy by instilling a level of harmful coercive persuasion that fosters an “us versus them” mentality.

Other Q1-2014 Updates: Being that I regrouped and redirected my approach to this independent research project from a NRM comparative religion study into a propaganda analysis study, I revised my catalog publication templates so that all the front/back matter pages reinforces that new theme. I have also greatly expanded the "Further Reading" sections for each volume to cross-reference related materials across volumes. I also added more linkage to the "List of Scientology Illustrations" sections to tap online full text versions of the materials I have excerpted so far.

Thus, every single volume has been updated in more ways than one. The whole series as a collection is available here:

What's next: Since this is the final volume dealing with Eastern Beliefs comparison, the hard parts are done. The remaining three volumes center around various forms of miscellaneous supernatural woo, fringe history and murdered mythology. I hope to crank those publications out one per month over the next three months, and then get down to real business of writing academic quality essays & publishing about my findings from these past few years of independent research.

My game plan for the writing phase of this project is as follows. I also hope to develop a series of propaganda debunking essays that tears into all hot air fallacies Scientology bases their so-called "applied philosophy" on. I've been doing a fairly significant amount of study and research into propaganda techniques, and I have crafted the following matrix as an outline of the all of the commonly found tactics that Hubbard used extensively in his lectures and publications.

So my series of essays for my propaganda study will start out with 1 or 2 opening articles on basic critical thinking, logic/reasoning skills and why those skills are so important for people who exited the cult. Chris Shelton, former Sea Org member who has been featured in Karen's interview video series and on the X-Women internet radio show, has graciously agreed to collaborate with me on the opening segments. Our co-authored article(s) will then serve as the backgrounder info for my series of propaganda essays where I will run through the 100 technique indexed in the above rubric, featuring a short list of related techniques in a given article, and show multiple examples from over decades taken from the materials in my research catalog publications and elsewhere.

The end result will likely be in 1-2 dozen academic-style articles that makes the argument that Scientology's religiosity claims is ALL based on propaganda in a big way. I expect publish this series in 2 places: As web2.0 media infused version on my HubPages profile. And as a plain text document on my Academia.edu profile where I have myself setup under a "independent researcher" smack dab in the middle of the new sandbox for apologists. (Who have been having a grand ol' time slapping up all their written works that were never published in peer-reviewed journal. So WTH - if they can do it, then dagnabbit so can I).

"When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."

Are you referring to the Propaganda Identification Rubric? If so - yes, I agree. But I'm not quite ready to go there yet.

FWIW, as discussed upstream ITT, I do plan on branching out to other threads once I get past the compilation phase of this project. But getting all the research catalog volumes done has proven to be a far bigger task than I ever anticipated. Thus, I haven't gotten into analytical discussions and dissecting things yet since I'm still chewing on the assembly of materials.